Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Genesis · About this commentary
Clothed with skins, and sent out
Genesis 3:20-24
20 The man called his wife Eve because she would be the mother of all the living. · WEB
The man names his wife for life in the hour of the death sentence, God clothes them at a cost, and the expulsion is protection.
The first thing the man does after hearing that he will return to dust is to name his wife Eve because she would be the mother of all the living. It is an extraordinary response to a death sentence, and the only way to account for it is the promise he has just heard. Something was said about her offspring, and he has believed it enough to name her for life on the day he was told he would die.
Then God acts, and the act is domestic and enormous: Yahweh God made garments of animal skins for Adam and for his wife, and clothed them.
They had already made coverings. Fig leaves were a real attempt and were not adequate, and God does not commend the effort or improve it — he replaces it. What he provides comes from skins, which means something died. The text does not say what, does not describe a sacrifice, and draws no lesson from it; the fact is simply set down, in a chapter that has just promised a bruised heel. The covering of shame costs a life, and it is God who supplies both the covering and the cost.
The last act is the expulsion, and the reason given for it is not anger. 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— The sentence breaks off unfinished, which is rare in Hebrew narrative and reads like a thought God does not complete.
What it stops short of saying is the horror it is preventing: a creature in rebellion, alive forever, with the corruption permanent and no death to end it. Endless life in that condition would have fixed the ruin in place beyond remedy. The gate is shut so that the promise of verse fifteen has room to work — a sinner who dies can be raised; a sinner who cannot die can only continue.
So the driving out is a severe mercy, and the text is careful about it. The man is sent out to till the ground he was taken from, which is the work he was made for, still his. And cherubim with a flaming sword are placed to guard the way to the tree of life — guarding a way, not abolishing it. The tree is not destroyed; access is suspended.
And the way stays open in the long term. The last chapter of Scripture puts the tree of life in the middle of the city, with its leaves for the healing of the nations and nothing barring the gates Revelation 22:2 Revelation 22:14. What is closed at the east of Eden is opened at the end of the book, and the same promise runs between the two.
settled What this mark means