Read with Me
Genesis 3:20-24 (HCSB)
Adam named his wife Eve because she was the mother of all the living. The LORD God made clothing out of skins for Adam and his wife, and He clothed them.
The LORD God said, “Since man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil, he must not reach out, take from the tree of life, eat, and live forever.” So the LORD God sent him away from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. He drove man out and stationed the cherubim and the flaming, whirling sword east of the garden of Eden to guard the way to the tree of life.
Listen with Me
There are three significant events detailed in these five verses.
First, is Adam naming Eve. In the beginning, Adam had simply called her Issha, which is the generic term “woman”. But now, on the cusp of their being expelled from the garden, realizing that they would not die immediately because God had detailed things that would happen to them in the meantime, he had now he now gave her a proper name, “Eve”, or in Hebrew, “Khavva”, which is related to the root meaning “living”. Moses explains that this name was appropriate because she would become the mother of all human beings that would be born in the world, the source of all physical human life.
The second event is God providing clothes for the couple. In their embarrassment at realizing that they were naked, an awareness that had been caused by their sin, they had quickly sewn together loincloths out of fig leaves, which were large, but scratchy. God replaced those loincloths with garments made from skins.
There have been many discussions about where the skins came from. But as usual, the simplest explanation is correct. The skins came from animals. Adam and Even had both sinned and had been found guilty before God. That meant that they were now subject to an immediate death penalty. God’s first act of mercy was killing two animals as substitutes for the death that they both deserved. Just as God had forecast in Genesis 3:15 the future coming of a divine Deliverer, the seed of the woman, so now he gave a picture of how that Deliverer would provide that deliverance: by providing a substitutionary death for the sins of all.
This also explains why offerings of the first born of the flock were brought to God by Abel in Genesis 4:3, and why Cain’s offering of produce, with no substitutionary death, was rejected. The very first sacrifice was the model of what would be required to pay for all sins: one sin, one death.
But there was one other reason for clothing Adam and Eve with the skins of sacrificed animals. Every time they got dressed, they would have to remember that it was their own rebellion that had introduced death into the world.
The third event in this section is the expulsion of the couple from the garden. Not only were they excluded from the easy life God’s grace had provided there, with everything that they needed easily and readily accessible, but they had also forfeited their access to the Tree of Life, which would have enabled them to live forever. Even though their perfect bodies would live a very long time, they were doomed to die eventually. So, God drove them from the garden, and placed cherubim, guardian angels, at the entrance to bar the way to anyone trying to get back in.
Pray with Me
Father, it is amazing to realize that even something as seemingly simple as Your clothing of Adam and Eve with skins was packed with grace and meaning. All sin leads to death, and without Your grace intervening, we would all deserve eternal death, eternal separation from the eternal, holy God. Lord, thank You for Jesus, the ultimate sacrifice, and the one whose death enables us to be clothed with His righteousness, His glory. Amen.